Card1, our own digital business card product, has had a heavy week of development. If it's new to you: card1.net lets anyone build a digital business card in minutes, for free, and share it by QR code, by link, from an email signature, or by tapping an engraved metal card against someone's phone. Nobody has to install anything. They save your details and hand theirs back in the same tap.
That last part is where it gets interesting. A paper card is out of date the moment your mobile number changes. A Card1 card updates everywhere at once, including copies already sitting in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet on someone else's phone. When a member of staff leaves a business, the business keeps the contacts they made rather than watching a Rolodex walk out of the building on a private phone.
We built Card1 because we kept seeing the same problem at trade shows, sales meetings and networking events: printed cards go in a drawer, contacts get lost, and businesses have no visibility over who their own team has been talking to. This week's release tackles several of the rough edges that stood between Card1 and being something a UK business could roll out properly.
Pricing rebuilt to show what you actually pay
We rebuilt pricing end to end and now quote it including VAT. It sounds like a small thing, but it isn't. Plenty of SaaS pricing pages show a number that isn't the number that lands on your card statement, and that gap causes friction at exactly the point someone is deciding whether to commit. Showing the VAT-inclusive price means a UK business sees the real cost upfront, no mental arithmetic required.
A card can now represent a business, not just a person
Until this update, every Card1 card was shaped around one person: their name, their role, their direct details. That works fine for a freelancer or a sole trader, but it's the wrong shape for a business that wants a shared, consistent front door. Now a card can be built as a business entity in its own right, with its own details and its own identity, rather than a personal card stretched to cover a role it was never designed for.
This matters for any organisation that wants consistency across a sales team, a reception desk, or a support line. It also solves the succession problem: when a business card belongs to the business rather than the individual, changing the person behind it doesn't mean rebuilding it from scratch.
Fourteen days of Pro, then a graceful landing on free
We've changed how new accounts are onboarded. Every new account now gets fourteen days of Pro features to try, then settles onto the free tier rather than being cut off or switched off entirely. That's a deliberate choice. We'd rather someone get a proper feel for what Pro can do and choose it because it's useful, not because we've locked them out of a card that used to work.
It also means there's no cliff edge. A card built on day one still works on day fifteen, day fifty and beyond, whether or not Pro gets renewed.
Wallet passes rebuilt and tested on real phones
The Apple Wallet and Google Wallet integration has been rebuilt and tested on actual handsets rather than relying on simulator behaviour. Wallet passes are one of those features that look simple until you test them across device versions, OS updates and the quirks each platform introduces. Testing on real phones catches the edge cases a simulator quietly papers over, and it's the difference between a wallet pass that updates reliably in the background and one that silently goes stale.
Why this matters beyond the feature list
None of this is about chasing a longer changelog. It's about closing the gap between what a digital business card promises and what actually happens when someone taps their phone against yours at a conference, in a boardroom, or at the bar afterwards. Free to start, no card details required, and the card keeps working whether or not anyone ever pays us a penny for it.
Card1 is built and maintained by the same team behind CREATE's client work in web development and digital product design. If a business is looking at how it presents itself digitally, whether that's a networking tool like Card1 or a full website rebuild, it's worth a conversation. Take a look at our portfolio to see the kind of work that sits behind products like this one, or book a call if there's a project worth talking through.
